David C and I initially made our way to Boonah and waited all afternoon. Weak cells did develop but the stronger initial cells occurred across the border in NSW. We watched as drier air entrainment cause base levels to evaporate and rise further it seemed. I feel this may have descreased the potential CAPE indicatd by the models. The latter models definitely indicated more of a squall line with perhaps the odd supercell with more of a linear mode from 850hPa and higher in the sounding. This is what occurred.

Cells developed almost overhead so we made our way to Beaudesert. Three cells intensified ahead of the squall line with the occasional bolt and reasonable structure observed. Unfortunately, the lack of direct heating with the encroaching squall line and its speed simply either saw a weakening and/or merge with the squall line.

After this attempt we made our position for the squall line particularly interested in the tail end charlie cell.

A very nice high contrast squall line in the end. The second last photograph shows the cell that went through the CBD which we could have intercepted had we taken the correct route - a blacked entry and traffic near long waiting at a traffic light wasted 10 to 15 minutes. This was suffucient time to intercept it from the road to the airport. Excellent road network in Brisbane!

All in all a good day up in QLD, have attached some of my video captures of mostly the same scenes as in Jimmy's pics above.

....so, some of the earlier GFS runs (eg on Weds and Thurs) indicated good directional shear from 500-850mb winds suggesting a favourable situation for supercell development on Saturday afternoon across NSW northern rivers and across into South east Queensland. There were at times hints of a surface low developing in response to the upper level trough, or otherwise generally good turning between the sfc and 850mb. This raised a few eyebrows, so Jimmy and I decided on a long haul chase up into northern NSW as a start.

It soon became evident with each progressive model run that there would be quite unidirectional shear between 500-850mb, so the expectation of significant severe weather was kind of diminished by Friday -- but we were already well on the road so there was nothing to loose!

On chase day we sat at Boonah from the late morning. A line developed on radar out west of Texas (QLD) so we were hoping that isolated storms would initiate ahead of the line, which was advancing fairly quickly. A brief period of NE winds were encouraging and eventually isolated storms did develop:

...and one of these initially intensified quite rapidly with an inflow band

The problem was that the anvils were coming across, which suppressed what heating we had, and this conspired with the NW 850 winds to make these initially promising storms struggle. After giving up on these plan B was the northern end of the line that was now moving over the metro area.

We navigated our way around the city and got some good footage of the approaching shelf and the base structure of the more isolated cells on the northern end that produced large hail.

We missed our planned exit to head north to the airport and beyond and got caught in traffic as the line hit, with some small hail thrown in (1 to 1.5 cm) at Macgregor.

Although this system produced some nice severe storms with some moderate hail reported it didn't live up to more severe expectations due a shift in the wind profile that caused a more linear system to develop. Others have discussed this elsewhere so I won't go into any detail.

On a photogenic note, which is what i'm more interested in, some of the images posted in this thread have shown some very nice storm structure with the high contrast shelf clouds dominating. Hopefully we will see some more images from different angles and different cells posted of this event.